


Port Previously Unknown

by Hecate



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Developing Friendships, Gamora Dies (Marvel), Gen, IN SPACE!, Nebula Feels (Marvel), Nebula-centric (Marvel), Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sister-Sister Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:35:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26368057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: Gamora still remembered her parents. Nebula hated her for that.
Relationships: Gamora & Nebula (Marvel), Nebula & Natasha Romanov
Comments: 12
Kudos: 23
Collections: We Die Like Fen 4: We Lived to Die Afen





	Port Previously Unknown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionessvalenti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/gifts).



[Gamora still remembered her parents.

Nebula hated her for that even after she learned how to hold her sister's hand.]

~*~

"Did you ever go back to the planet you came from?" Natasha asks her, her eyes on the TV, some movie Tony told Nebula to watch playing out on the screen.

There are explosions and spaceships and phasers and people talking about destiny. Tony told her that it was fun. She's still working on what fun actually is but she thinks that maybe, Tony's idea of fun and hers aren't quite the same.

It doesn't matter.

"No," she says. "There was no reason to."

Natasha frowns, looks at Nebula briefly. "You didn't want to know if you still had a family."

It's not a question, not really. A statement, maybe, or a wild guess. 

Though with Natasha, it's never really like that. 

Nebula thinks about her father then, about the way he looked at her and at Gamora. And she doesn't protest.

Another explosion, the screen lighting up in yellow and red. Natasha snorts, shakes her head. "Tony has such bad taste in movies."

~*~

Two years since everything changed, two years since her father snapped his fingers and half the universe fell away.

She has a room at the Avengers Compound. There are things in her room, too, things that are supposed to be hers. There aren't many because she doesn't know what she should want, and she doesn't quite understand half the things Tony offers to her. 

And he offers a lot.

The window opens up to the view of the woods, greens everywhere, and there are walls of steel she can pull down when it becomes too much.

People slid into her life since her father's death, slow and unwanted, a burden after Thanos taught her what loss means with a sister gone and people turning to ash. 

Tony, who comes by sometimes, carrying new tools and ideas. He tinkers with the spaceship parked in one of the Compound's halls, trades insults with Rocket. Looks at Nebula with strange eyes. Sometimes, he leaves candy in front of her room, a reminder of their journey through the stars.

Natasha, who organizes the missions, who prioritizes and plans, so very distanced in the first months after Thanos' death. She is easier now but not lighter, her moods fading into each other, grief and resignation forced into composure.

Steve, who doesn't talk much to Nebula. It doesn't bother her. 

Okoye, who she only meets as a hologram and never as a person.

Rhodey, terrifyingly open, asking her about her past, about the planets she has been to. Never asking her how many people she killed.

She leaves Terra more often than not, missions with Rocket and Rhodey, missions with Carol when she asks for their help.

Carol still comes back to Terra, and she comes back with messages. People looking for their families and for their friends. Rumors about the stones, lies about what Thanos did to them. She brings them to whatever was left of Xandar, too, and even to the Kree.

"People need to know," she says, and Nebula never asks her what she means.

"Yeah," Natasha agrees, and it's mostly Natasha who goes through the data, an A.I. with a human voice guiding her through. It has a name and an opinion, and it took Nebula months to get used to that.

Rocket seemed to like it.

But Rocket took a strange liking to Terra anyway, working on the cars in the garage, eating his way through every menu in town, asking Tony for money to buy the things he couldn't steal.

Sometimes, Nebula imagines Quill's reaction to that. 

Natasha comes to her after Carol's last data dump, her face blank, a finger tapping a rhythm against her leg.

"I think," she starts. Stops. Gives Nebula a tiny smile. "One of these planets asking for information could be your..." She stops again, and Nebula knows that she almost said home planet and thought better of it.

"They kinda look like you," Natasha finally says. "As far as I can tell."

Nebula cocks her head and wonders, briefly, how humanity kept on surviving despite knowing nothing about the universe around them, the planets and species and politics. The dangers lurking everywhere, monsters and armies ready to swallow up everything that comes their way.

"I was born to Luphomoids," she says. "Our planet is gone."

Natasha blinks. Says, "Oh," and Nebula has no use for her pity or her horror. Luphom is not in her memories. 

Nebula almost snaps at her then, the number of planets thriving with life and civilizations until Thanos came along burning on her tongue. She swallows it all down.

It doesn't matter anymore.

Thanos got to the other planets in the end.

He got to them all.

"We lived on another planet when Thanos came for us," she says because Natasha's face is still carefully gentle and she can't stand it. "Most Luphomoids settled there." 

"So you remember that?" Natasha asks.

"No," she replies, and she doesn't. There is nothing left behind in her mind of her parents, no memories of siblings. The moment when she lost them gone, burned away, replaced by everything her father did to her. Everything she has done for him.

Natasha nods, a small bend to her lips, tiny and sad. 

"I don't remember my parents," she says. Offers, really, and Nebula knows this, this exchange of tragedies. Tony did this, too, back on the ship, though he came up with her stories on his own, raw assumptions that sometimes missed the truth completely. 

Sometimes, Nebula wonders if Quill would have done the same if he had lived. She always pushes the thought away quickly. She doesn't want to think about Quill. 

She looks at Natasha, and she doesn't tell her that she already knows, that she read the files Tony gave her. She knows of the parallels between herself and the Black Widow. 

Nebula stays silent. Terrans hate silence.

"There is a message from a Zehoberei as well," Natasha says after a while, mangling the word, and Nebula freezes. It can't be true. The Zehoberei died with Gamora. They are gone, Thanos' grand quest as a savior only slaughter in the end. 

She doesn't understand.

"They are living in some kind of colony, I think. They sent the planet's name but I have no idea how to pronounce that." A shrug, a sheepish smile that fades quickly. "Now that Thanos is dead, they are looking for their children."

"Her mother died," Nebula says. She knows that.

Gamora still remembered that.

Her mother's voice and the screaming and the first knife Thanos put in her hand.

She remembered that.

Nebula doesn't know how to tell Natasha that part of her past, Gamora's voice still lacking the steel and bitterness that would become so very familiar later, both of them still so very young. Breakable. 

And they both did break. But they broke in different ways.

She doesn't like to remember that.

~*~

She doesn't really think about the first message.

It's not important, not really, it doesn't mean anything.

Not like Thanos did.

Not like Gamora still does.

So she doesn't think about the message.

But she thinks about Gamora.

~*~

[Gamora still remembered her parents.

She remembered her family.

In the beginning, when they were still small and skilled in lying to themselves, she would tell Nebula that one day they would come for her. They would take her home.

They would take Nebula, too.]

~*~

She decides to follow the messages back into the stars at night, the clouds hiding the universe from her, the trees rustling with secret messages.

It's been so long that she had a mission of her own, a quest, and she has failed the last. Her father won, her sister is dead. Rocket and Nebula were the only ones left to remember her. 

Her sister deserved more than that. 

Her sister deserved a life.

~*~

"I want to come with you," Natasha says, and it surprises Nebula.

Natasha never came with them when they left Terra, not after they killed Thanos. She goes on missions on her home planet, an Avenger again, and she comes home with new secrets and prisoners and the shadows of bruises on her skin. But she never even looks at the Benetar, and sometimes, when they call in from other planets or a ship, her eyes go distant and blank. 

"Why?" Nebula asks. 

Natasha shrugs. Pulls a yogurt out of the fridge, her back turned to Nebula as she speaks. 

"Getting stir-crazy, I guess," and Nebula knows it's a lie. 

It stings, the feeling as surprising as Natasha's request, but Nebula doesn't ask for Natasha's reason again.

Instead, she says, "We'll leave in five days," and she walks away before Natasha can answer.

~*~

"Steve doesn't want to come with us," Natasha says, and there is something raw in her voice, held back and unusual.

Nebula only nods. 

She didn't even know that Natasha wanted him to come with them.

She never thought of Tony.

He has a child now, a fragile and weak thing, and she knows better than to ask him to leave her behind for the stars. She saw him with Peter, and she saw him on their way to Terra.

The universe has nothing left for Tony Stark.

She is not sure there is so much left for her either.

Still, she carries food and weapons and tools into the ship, and she promises Rocket that she will bring the Benetar back in one piece.

And for a moment, before she leaves, she stands next to him silent, unmoving.

"Gamora would have accompanied you," he says, "even without the message for her." 

She knows he isn't looking at her. Knows that he sees something other than the grass in front of the Avengers Compound or the gleaming metal of the ship.

"Yes," she agrees.

She doesn't say goodbye.

~*~

"Do you remember anything? I know you don't remember Thanos taking you but maybe anything else?" Natasha asks her, her back turned on Nebula. "I don't like walking into things without having some kind of idea about what is waiting for me." A shrug. "It's a spy thing."

For a moment, Nebula almost tells her about traveling in this ship, about her sister and all the anger she felt whenever she looked at Gamora, how it swallowed her whole and left her wanting more. How Gamora put her arms around her just once, and Nebula pretends that she still remembers how it felt. 

About Udonta and his manic smile, daring her to be something else than a machine. 

Groot and Drax and Mantis and Quill. 

And the music. She almost tells Natasha about the music.

But it's not what Natasha is asking, and it's not what Nebula is willing to give.

"No," she says, a repetition, a ritual. Her past before Thanos has faded into nothing and any chance to avenge it has died with her father.

~*~

They arrive at the planet the first message came from in the morning, the sunlight a pale thing, filtered through dark clouds. For a moment, it's almost familiar, a place she has been before.

For a moment, she thinks, _Yes, I know this,_ until she remembers a planet Thanos sent her to retrieve a weapon, a planet with an anemic sun and a grey sky.

It's that planet she remembers.

There is nothing she knows here.

Still, she steps out of the ship, and she walks the streets with her back straight and her hand resting on her weapon. She might not know the people on this planet but chances are, they know her. She still is Thanos' daughter, after all, no matter that the news of his death have travelled into the far parts of the universe, no matter that she doesn't walk with his forces anymore. 

She will never be anything else. 

Still, she keeps on walking, Natasha by her side. 

And for a moment, with the handle of her daggers warming up beneath her palm and Natasha scanning every bit of the road ahead of them, everything changes, withdraws, and Natasha is someone else. Green skinned and red-haired, and Gamora is by her side again. 

Nebula hates every second of it. 

She pushes it away, pushes ahead, her steps faster than before, and she ignores Natasha calling after her. This was not her sister's home. She will not find Gamora here. 

Instead, she sees people who don't look like her and so very few that do. Blue skin and black eyes, and they scatter away when they see her, their voices faint and full with words she doesn't catch, doesn't understand. 

Maybe she could have, years ago. 

Maybe back then, they would have stepped out of the dark alleys to welcome her home, to guide her back to her family. 

It's a strange idea. Nebula doesn't dwell on it. 

They find the archives and close to it, the base of the planet's leaders or whatever was left of them. They find the source of the message. 

It's strangely easy to walk into the building, easy to stand back as Natasha talks to the guards, as she argues and manipulates. Easier still to follow her inside after she was done. They walk the halls together, Natasha steady and Nebula so far away, and it's Natasha again who introduces them, who asks about the messages Carol brought to them. 

There are more words then and nervous glances thrown Nebula's way, hushed conversations and data pulled up, the blue lights of the hologram turning Natasha's face strange and alien. Long speeches and apologies. 

It doesn't matter. 

Nebula always knew the truth.

No one had ever looked for her.

~*~

The sound of the ship is familiar and so is the sight of the galaxy surrounding it, black and empty, the distant lights of planet and suns lonely and bleak.

They don't speak.

~*~

She is on the bridge when Natasha finds her, sitting in the pilot seat that once belonged to Quill.

"I'm sorry," Natasha says, her voice quiet, careful all over again. 

Nebula only looks at her. 

A sigh, Natasha settling down at her side, unasked. Maybe unwanted. 

"It was a long shot. But still..." Another pause, Natasha's eyes on her hands for a long moment before she looks at Nebula again, focus suddenly unwavering. "I really wanted this to work out for you." 

Nebula breathes in, and she thinks of Gamora again, of that moment before they went their separate ways, Gamora asking her to stay, Gamora putting her arms around her, the first time they ever embraced. 

"I know," she finally says, her voice strange in her ears, halting and unsure. "So did I."

~*~

The days between one planet and another are quiet and slow, Nebula working on the ship. Natasha reading through the messages that reach them from Terra.

They don't talk about the last planet. 

Instead, Natasha asks her about all the planets Nebula has seen and the trading routes between them. She asks about traditional fighting styles and how Nebula's energy daggers were made. 

It's a distraction, Nebula knows it, but Natasha's face is open and easy, her gestures quick and wide. Nebula knows enough about the galaxy and the beings crawling all over it to see that Natasha still wants the answers to her questions. 

It could make things easier. It doesn't. But it could.

~*~

Another planet, darker than the one before, red skies and soil that has broken into dust years ago. It swirls around them whenever the wind picks up, gets into their eyes and into their weapons.

It's not a planet anyone would settle on. And yet, somebody did. 

The message told them where to go this time, it guides them through a village with huts that seem to fall apart under their own weight, through fields that look barren and dead. 

"What a shithole," Nebula says. 

Natasha frowns but doesn't protest. 

They find another hut in the remains of a forest, black trees with bent branches that seem to reach for a sun that isn't there, and Nebula lets Natasha take the first steps towards it, lets her knock while she waits a few steps behind her, her hands on her phaser. 

The old woman who opens the door doesn't look familiar at all. 

And still, Nebula knows her. She knows the shape of her eyes, the shape of her cheeks. The slant of her lips a cousin to Gamora's mouth, the lines on her skin lines Gamora will never have, her red hair turned white. 

She knows her. 

And Gamora never will.

"I'm Natasha," she hears Natasha say, her voice so calm and careful, and Nebula is angry, suddenly, she is furious, and she doesn't know why. "I'm here because of a message you sent out. About your...granddaughter." 

"Yes," the old woman says, her eyes on Nebula, "yes," she repeats. 

Natasha steps closer to the woman then, and a part of Nebula wants to warn her, wants to call out. Natasha is just human, after all, and the Zehoberei are stronger, faster. But the sound dies away, a crumbled thing inside her throat, and her body feels different than it did just moments before. 

"She believed you would come for her," Nebula hears herself say, and it's not her voice, it's younger than that, shaking and broken. "Why didn't you?" 

And it's the wrong thing to say because suddenly the woman is moving, she is coming for Nebula, and she is in front of her, and there are hands on her, hands shaking her. She thinks of killing the woman, a quick thought, familiar and sharp. 

It would be easy. 

It would be fast. 

But Natasha is there, Natasha is pulling the woman away. And Nebula thinks there are words, there is a conversation, but she isn't listening. She just stands there, and she thinks that Gamora was wrong. 

Her family never came for her.

They were not so different, after all.

~*~

"Her uncle looked for her," the woman says, her eyes distant.

There are three cups on the table between them, full and steaming. Nobody is reaching for them. 

"He never came back," she goes on. Grimaces. "I think I should have expected that. But I didn't." 

"I'm sorry," Natasha says, well-practiced platitudes, and it's strange to see her use them here, on a planet so far away from Terra. 

A snort, the woman looking briefly at Natasha. "Sure you are." 

Then, she looks at Nebula again. "You were with her?" she asks. 

Nebula nods. It's not the truth, it's only parts of it, but she likes to think that she was with Gamora when it mattered. 

"Was she happy?" the woman asks. 

Nebula stares at her. 

No one ever cared if they were happy. 

"I think she was," she finally says, thinking about the Guardians. "For a while." 

The woman smiles but it's not a real smile at all, it's something else. Regret, maybe, or rage. And Nebula doesn't care enough about her to try to understand. 

"That's something, I guess," the woman says. She gets up then, every step slow and tortured, and she walks to a chest in the corner of the room. Comes back moments later with a piece of paper in her hands. 

She gives it to Nebula without a word.

The picture is dotted with dirt, a tear ripping through the bottom of it, and Nebula doesn't understand why Gamora's family had it to begin with. There are better ways to save your memories, easier ones that will last longer than this shred of paper.

But it's there and it's in her hands.

"Keep it," the woman says. "I won't need it for much longer." 

Nebula doesn't react.

~*~

"We could keep on searching," Natasha says, hours away from the planet. "For your family. Or Gamora's."

"No," Nebula says, looking at the picture in her hands, at the man with his arm thrown around the woman standing next to him, at the girl between them, still so small that her head hardly reaches their knees. Her smile is so big, so happy, and her hands are wrapped around her parent's legs. 

"No," she repeats. "This is enough."

~*~

[Gamora still remembered her parents.

And now, Nebula remembers them for her. ]


End file.
